Ok so I see that an alteration spell is being cast, I want to disrupt that spell via damage (melee, range, energy or arcane damage), I hit, sometimes the spell is disrupted and sometimes the spell caster carries on and casts anyway.
I am genuinely curious to know:
- What is the chance to disrupt a casting via damage?
- Does the level of the caster make a difference?
- Does the damage type make a difference? I rarely ever see poison failing to disrupt a spell, is this because it often acts so many times per round or does it actually have a higher chance to disrupt?
- Does the caster type (cleric, druid, sorcerer or mage) make a difference?
- Does what they cast from (scroll, innate, arcane/divine spell-book) make a difference? I recently read an
@semiticgod post about the acid kensai saying scrolls are harder to disrupt (which prompted this topic) if so, what is the % difference in chance to disrupt.
I used to believe, way back, that clerics were harder to disrupt than mages and often used other means to avoid their spells than damage disrupting, whereas mages I would happily disrupt via damage providing I had gotten past whatever protection was needed to do so. Recently however (since EE) I seem to disrupt clerics just fine. Was this belief mistaken all along or did EE change anything in that regard?
I know some casters have undisruptable spells, generally I am not talking about these, although it would be useful to know who they are. Mulahey, I believe is one.
TLDR: What are the mechanics behind the chance to disrupt a spell via melee, range, energy or arcane damage?
Thanks in advance!
Ganda
Member Posts: 35
Comments
In vanilla, ToBex could determine disruption via a formula, but EE I've heard has no such mechanism. In my experience in EE, I have found poison only occasionally disrupts enemy spells, but it depends on the script rather than chance: if an enemy got hit once during the casting of a spell but did not get disrupted, it could also get hit several other times without getting disrupted.
I don't know how the ToBex formula worked. I'll tag @Demivrgvs in case he knows.
Could be my mods, though. Not sure if SCS does anything like give extra interrupt resistance, or choose randomly whether a spell is cast from scroll/script. It's not a very common occurrence, but it does happen.
ToBEx Concentration check works like this: if (1D20 + luck) > (spell level + damage taken) then you can still cast the spell.
No idea why EE left so many cool ToBEx options out.
@Lord_Tansheron I think SCS seldomly use scrolls and even wands (both not interruptable). I'm not 100% sure on this though because I stopped playing ages ago and I barely have the time to mod.
I have no proof but is is a strong feeling I got from all these years playing Baldur's Gate, even in my most recent run, my Blackguard could ignore spellcasting interruption about 1/4 of the times.
@Tresset That sounds complex! As you pointed out, so odd it would appear to be a bug if correct.
@Lord_Tansheron That is pretty much how I felt, like sometimes the same spells were disrupted and at other times not. But I must admit to not having done any kind of systematic and thorough testing.
I just did a small test using my own multiplayer party and as @semiticgod said, I got disrupted 100% of the time (20 out of 20) while hitting my own party casters (a cleric and a mage) with my own party members.
Have not tested on enemy casters yet at all though.
I know Clerics will have better AC, but in the past I could swear to seeing them hit many times and not having their spells disrupted.
I can't think of many sure fire times enemies have been uninterruptable, I know Mulahey as an example is, or at least his first spell is. How about the Amazon's after the Naskel mines, I'm pretty certain I have seen them being hit for damage but continuing their spell casting.
If you want to experiment, you need to know how the spell casting is scripted. As already mentionned in this thread, there are script actions which will force the spellcasting anyway.
I'll be in game experimenting though
Any time any spellcaster undergoes the "damage taken" animation, they are disrupted... even if no damage is taken. (I forget the circumstances when that can happen - immunity to poison damage but no immunity to the poison effect? - but it can happen.) The chance of disruption is 100%.
BUT, some creatures in the game are coded in lazy, crappy ways. In some instances the devs (the Bioware devs, mind you, not Beamdog) seem to have decided that "we want this cleric to cast Spell A, then Spell B, etc." and instead of coding a good AI script and using normal, legal amounts of memorization slots, those enemies just have a script that goes "cast Spell A uninterruptibly, wait six seconds, cast Spell B uninterruptibly, etc." From reports I've seen, this may include that crazy cleric west of Beregost, who is surrounded by skeletons, and at least one of the Irenicus fights.
So, the chance of disruption is either 100%, or 0%, depending on the situation.
Which is terrible. Here's hoping we finally get the TobEx Concentration Check in the next game patch - not to mention the "no disruption on zero damage" rule, which I rather consider a bug-fix than a tweak. And here's hoping the same formula applies to ALL spellcasters. Fingers crossed...
0 or 100% might be the real intent but it seems the engine reacts differently. Btw the log tells you if there is a spellcasting failure, not the graphical animations.
And I didn't say you could *tell* whether there was interruption by the graphical animation. I said the "takes damage" graphical animation is, functionally, what *causes* the disruption. @Kaigen maybe that's the example I was thinking of: cast Stoneskin, get 100% fire resistance, and get hit by Stonefire or the Sword of Flame while casting. Even though the fire doesn't hurt you and the Stoneskin will absorb the hit, you will still be disrupted.
Anecdotally: if you play a bunch and don't pay super-close attention, you will see some hits cause disruption and other hits don't. And you will arrive at the conclusion that there is some formula at play. But I believe that is an illusion caused by the less-than-scientific method of observation. (The chance is either 100% or 0% in any given situation, but over the course of a game where you see those situations 1,000 times, and unbeknownst to you, 10% of those instances were 0% situations, you reasonably conclude that there is a 10% chance to resist disruption.)
Anecdotally: everyone constantly talks about how great the Insect Swarm druid spells are, because they shut down spellcasting. Have you ever tagged a caster with an Insect Swarm spell, watched him get interrupted two rounds in a row, and then watched him get a spell off in the third round, notwithstanding taking insect damage and doing the doubled-over "takes damage" animation in the middle of the casting sequence? I doubt it.
Anecdotally: there has been a standing feature request for Beamdog to implement a chance-based formula for spell disruption for several years now. I feel like if the devs had actually implemented this in any patch, we would be able to point to some mention of it. But there is none.
It would be really, really nice if someone from the dev team could settle this once and for all. But if my suspicion is correct, doing so would only call attention to the poorly coded AI in the game, which has escaped "Enhancement" by Beamdog. So, the continuing dev silence seems to support my theory.
So it's possibly that the animation for a melee attack might happen before the attack itself goes through. If the attack roll is successful, it will immediately trigger the "damage taken" animation in the target. But it's possible the spellcasting will finish after that animation, and the actual melee attack happens after that.
In the background, it would be simple: the spell got of and the caster was hit by a melee attack after that. But visually, it would look look like the caster was hit while spellcasting, and thus give you the impression that it's possible to resist spell disruption.
Does anyone know how rolling for initiative work? Or when weapon speed gets computed? Maybe the game decides which animation is the real attack before initiative and weapon speed are calculated; in which case the above situation could happen more often.
I don't know how this stuff works. But I know enough to know that there are many reasons you might think the chance of disruption is less than 100%, but be mistaken.
What I can say for sure when I don't get interrupted is that:
-I start to cast
-the casting animation is going on
-I take some damage
-the damage appears in the combat log (I think this is important, I'm sure I suffer some damage during the casting)
-I don't get the damage animation, only the small blood one
-my cast continues
I had a few screenshots of my Blackguard in ToB to prove that but I deleted everything after my last report on the no-reload thread sadly.
I don't believe that all are either 100% or 0% chance.
- Spellcasters, mages in particular, are already the most difficult foes. reciprocally your own spellcasters are often the most powerful members of the team. I wouldn't like to see this game turning into a list of mage battles.
- Introducing concentration checks should not hide the current phenomenon. I don't call it "issue" or "problem" as this is still subject to interpretation. However something has to be assessed and fixed before trying to introduce something new.
I hope that
a) they are going to make it optional and
b) a log entry will clearly indicate the concentration check result.
*Any lvl spell would always fail if the caster was hit, regardless of the lvl and class of the caster and regardless of the amount of damage being dealt. The exceptions to this were spells cast from items or force-scripted spells.
This previous implementation made for very frequent interruptions, even dealing 0 damage. Use of poison or insect swarm was very effective due to the many hits per round.
As far as I can understand, spell interruption has been implemented like this now:
*When a caster is hit while casting a spell, there is a chance that the spell will be interrupted. The likelihood of interruption increases with the lvl of the spell being cast and with the amount of damage being dealt. Presumably, spells cast from items and force-scripted spellsstill cannot be interrupted.
This new implementation reduces the frequentcy of interruptions, especialy concerning low-but-frequent damage-dealing tactics, such as poison or insect swarm. According to the thread I’ve linked to, interruptions are almost impossible now, even when exorbitant amounts of damage are being dealt.
Can anyone provide some further insight to this?
Quoting from this thread: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/49801/how-does-concentr-2da-work
Spellcasting Failure (16669)
The way that spellcasters fail after taking damage has
been externalized to CONCENTR.2da. By default, any
damage a spellcaster takes will cause them to fail their
spellcasting.
CHECK_MODE
0 Any damage
1 (1d20 + luck) vs. (spell level + damage taken)
2 (1d20 + Concentration ) vs. (15 + spell level)
Note from the Developers: This is inspired by a feature
from ToBEx. Be aware that Baldur's Gate games have
no Concentration skill; using that option will use a basic
1d20+luck formula for the caster's check.
The file has this by default:
2DA V1.0
0
BEHAVIOR VALUE
CHECK_MODE 1
The big difference, as of v2.0, is the option to let casters roll to avoid being interrupted. But to enable thus, players have to modify a .2da file with an external program (Near Infinity/DLTCEP) or a (my) Weidu mod. If players don't modify that file then interruption works exactly like it did 17 years ago.
The smaller change cane with v2.5.17: before, casters were interrupted when hit, even if the hit did zero damage. (Think, caster with 100% fire resistance being hit by a Fireball.) This was wrong and dumb. Now, casters will only be interrupted if they actually take damage.
The smaller change cane with v2.5.17: before, casters were interrupted when hit, even if the hit did zero damage. (Think, caster with 100% fire resistance being hit by a Fireball.) This was wrong and dumb. "
Not necessarily. They only need to flinch to interrupt casting. I could walk up and blow in a casters face and hurt them at all. But if they flinch, its a perfectly valid interrupt.
My problem is that even when targets take damage, there's still way too much inconsistency regarding whether they'll be disrupted. I've died to Bassilus so many times because he was able to cast Hold Person through my damage, only to reload and succeed in disrupting him the second time around. And you'll occasionally see that with other characters as well, or even your own player characters, who can sometimes get lucky on that and cast through damage.
And really, I consider this to be the single biggest technical problem with the games right now. Casters are supposed to be limited by the danger of having their spells disrupted by damage. That's part of the intended game balance, so when it doesn't work, it makes enemy casters more threatening than they're supposed to be. I would really, really like this to get fixed at some point, because I honestly think it would transform how the game works on a fundamental level, given how widespread this problem is.